


Vapor and Spark

by hellkitty



Category: Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Spark Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-21 01:59:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/592179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little something for tf-rare-pairing. I...am not good at writing Orion Pax lol.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vapor and Spark

Orion had never seen anything like it before, and this was only the foyer.  Senator Shockwave’s Rodion tower apartment seemed to stretch impossibly high, long fluted ribs of steel arching above his head, branching into sinuous wriggles across the vaulted ceiling.  Around him, air swirled, warm and cool, colored vapor in little puffs guided from discrete vents in the floor.  The effect was a glittering display of color and movement and sensation as he moved, colored gasses eddying as he moved, feeling lost in the space.

“Ah,” the voice, still on that verge of familiar and strange, behind him.  Orion turned, to see Shockwave standing in the doorway to the rest of the apartment. “I see you found the vapor fountain.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘found’,” Orion said.  It was hard to avoid, really.

“It’s an indulgence, I suppose. One finds oneself buying fancies and trinkets merely because of a momentary fancy.” A sheepish sort of shrug, as though he was embarrassed. “When the sound component is activated, though, it makes a unique alarm system.”

Which brought  Orion to the point. “Right. And did it this time?”

“No,” Shockwave said. “But come, it’s farther in.”  He gestured, even the simple wave of the hand somehow elegant and refined.

Orion followed, swirling the colored air as he moved, following the Senator into the next room, this one lined with some off-planet, exotic stone, and a series of broad, high windows through which Rodion seemed to lay scattered like a cast off handful of jewels. It looked pretty from up here, so different from the Dead End.

The Senator paused by one of the windows, slightly ajar, and Orion could see a pavemented balcony outside. A landing pad for air frames, of course. He saw so few in his usual beat that it took a klik to register. “Entry, possibly, through here,” Shockwave said, and then continued, leading to another room, “And, well, I presume this speaks for itself.” He spread his hands before the litter: datapads scattered, a desk’s console crudely smashed.

Orion stepped closer. “We’ll need dataforensics in here,” Orion said. “Do you have any back up or listing of the files?”

“Oh,” Shockwave said, blandly, “That won’t be necessary.”

“But we need to know what files the thieves accessed.”

“Nothing important,” Shockwave said, with a breezy wave of his hand.

“Senator,” Orion said, “Please. It’s an investigation. We need to be thorough.”

“Ah,” the Senator said, moving to lean against the shattered console. “It’s not an investigation, though.”

“Then what is it?” As usual around him, Orion had the distinct feeling currents swirled around and over him—sort of like the vapor fountain, but less tangible and benign. 

“An alibi,” Shockwave said, with a wink. “After all, how else am I going to get a meeting with the captain of Rodion Police without attracting suspicion?”

“So you…staged this?” Orion looked around, at the scattered pads, the broken desk. It seemed…bizarre.

“As I said, occasionally one finds oneself prone to indulging the silliest fancies.” He gave a shrug.

Orion still had the feeling he was drowning in deep waters.  “Why would you want to see me?” Beyond the obvious: he owed his life to Shockwave—the Senator’s intervention, both physical and political, were the only reasons he still had a job. And a life, if what happened to Springarm and Wheelarch was any indication.

“I take an interest in all my projects. Sometimes, a personal one.” A glimmer of a smile on that quicksilver face. It was one of Shockwave’s most charismatic characteristics: the expressive, mobile face, shifting through emotions faster than Orion could process. Even in that, he made Orion feel a bit…slow.

“Personal.”

“You interest me, Orion.”

“You, uh, do too.” That sounded dumb. He felt dumb, the datapad, with the police report half filled out, dangling limply in his hand.

Shockwave reached forward, taking the pad, and pulling Orion closer, his other hand resting on Orion’s chassis, in a touch that straddled the line between companionable and intimate. “How does it feel?”

“What?” He looked down at the hand, glad for the faceplate that covered the confusion. 

“The modification,” Shockwave said, lilting the word into a tease, the fingertips tracing a seam of Orion’s chesplate.  “How does it feel to be one of the chosen ones.”

Orion shook his head. “I’m not chosen. Just….”  Up close, Shockwave’s smile was even more disarming than from a distance.

“Just lucky?” A chuckle. “But then you realized you don’t believe in luck.”

His own, echoing laugh. Because he was exactly right. His own sounded a bit tenser, nervous. It was strange to be read like that, as though he were so transparent. “You have to admit anything else seems…ludicrous.” Destiny, fate, all the words Shockwave loved to use, his blue optics coruscating with emotion.

“Not so ludicrous, from my perspective.”  The hand continued its slow travel over Orion’s armor, finding the chestplate’s armor lock. “May I?” The courtesy sent a trill through Orion’s system. It wasn’t the rote manners he instilled in his officers, but something warm and sincere.

Orion released the lock internally, the latch clicking open, his chestplate parting in the center and retracting, revealing the new architecture of the Matrix mount above his spark chamber.

The air swirled against the metal, stirring the empty air in his chassis. Shockwave seemed fascinated, his optics dipping into the open chassis, the symmetry of the mounting struts almost leading the gaze inward. 

“Your work,” Orion said, modestly.  He felt naked, exposed, but after all, he owed his career, if not his life, to Shockwave and his protection.  This was barely anything to ask of him.

“The work of friends of mine,” Shockwave said. “I merely,” he added, his voice growing husky and faint, as he traced one finger’s tip along the upper mounting strut, “make connections.” 

Orion twitched, nearly a flinch, at the light touch, the finger’s brush against the warm, sensitized metal.

Shockwave smiled, from under lidded optics. “Have you thought of it? Of what it might feel like?”

“Of course.” He wanted to add a ‘not’, but he couldn’t. Not in honestly. How could anyone suddenly have a Matrix frame in their chassis and not at least have the thought, if not a fantasy?

“They say,” Shockwave said, his hand continuing its exploration, the fingers eliciting impossibly fine ripples of sensation over his sensornet. Of course, he thought. The Matrix frame was grafted to his spark chamber, every touch relayed to his spark. “That it feels like ecstasy, the Matrix. A constant feedback between it and your spark. Utter, blissful communion.”

Orion could barely keep upright, the susurrus voice, the silken touches over the frame, wracking him with sensual shivers. His hands clutched, aimlessly, striving for balance, catching Shockwave’s arms. “I-I wouldn’t know,” he managed, his voice a thready gasp. 

“You might, in time,” Shockwave said, a smile, like an aurora, flashing over his face, his optics flicking up for a moment before returning to the opened armor.  The hand gave one last, lingering stroke over the Matrix frame, before he sighed, sitting back, withdrawing his hand.

Orion wobbled, his sensornet on the ravaged edge of desire, made, somehow, all the sharper by the knowledge that this was illicit. Inappropriate. Wrong. Shockwave had staged a break-in, just to meet with him again. What else might he do?

“Ah,” Shockwave said, his hands moving, gently, to close Orion’s spark armor. “You’re questioning my methods.”

“Not your cause.”

“Trust me at least so much,” the Senator said, tracing his thumbs with one last regretful touch, down the closing seam of Orion’s chestplate. “These are deep waters you’re in. Nothing is what it seems, nobody is entirely honest.” A self-deprecating grin, his hands floating to rest on the console he'd shattered, to stage the scene. “The best,” he said, his voice sliding like liquid silk over Orion’s audio receptors, “is to learn to trust your spark.”


End file.
